Rating: 
Summary: Exquisite and Totally Original
Review: Do you think there's nothing new under the literary sun? Maybe not, but MY NAME IS RED is nothing like any book I've ever read before. It's dense, it's literary, it's stunningly gorgeous. Needless to say, I absolutely loved it.
The novel takes place in the 16th century, in the Ottoman Empire and centers around the murder of a miniaturist named Elegant Effendi. Little by little, as we hear from such strange narrators as a corpse, a tree, a butterfly, a dog, a horse, etc., we learn that Elegant was no doubt murdered because of a secret manuscript, one on which his fellow miniaturists are still working.
MY NAME IS RED is definitely not a murder mystery, however. In fact, it's not a mystery of any kind. It's more an elaborate tapestry of ideas than a mystery (although we do find out the name of Effendi's killer), though it avoids polemic of any kind, in every area on which it touches.
The characters that populate MY NAME IS RED are wholly believable and totally engrossing. There is Esther, a Jewish fabric seller and matchmaker who loves gossip and makes it her business to carry notes from any one of her clients to any of the other. Of course, she reads the notes and even discusses their content with their recipients. There are the three miniaturists who were working with Elegant, each of whom is suspected of being his killer. There is Master Ossman, the master miniaturist who's trained the others and who cares deeply for all of them...but not quite as deeply as he cares for art. There is Shekure, a beautiful woman who's love story with a character named Black forms a significant and engaging subplot to the solving of the murder. Woven throughout the book is the voice of the murderer, himself, a man who is tortured by what he's done and the knowledge that sooner or later, he is going to be found out. Unlike most authors, Pamuk is quite adept at managing a large cast of characters and I know I never felt disoriented or confused. I simply felt engaged, in the fullest sense of the word.
Pamuk does a wonderful job of portraying each character's rich emotional life in this book and he does so without melodrama or hyperbole. I found myself caring about every one of the characters, whether I could identify with him or not. In no way, however, is this book a character study...unless it is a collective one.
Although this book centers on a murder, it is primarily a book of ideas and is very intellectually focused. We learn much about Turkish coffeehouse gossip and about the objections of the miniaturists to the Venetian manner of portrait painting (forbidden to the miniaturists). We learn much about Ottoman politics and everyday life in the Empire.
Like other master storytellers, Pamuk doesn't spell everything out in MY NAME IS RED. He wisely fills this masterpiece with holes and spaces for the reader to fill in. The entire narrative is infused with a nebulous, dreamlike quality that only serves to heighten the beauty and timelessness of the book.
MY NAME IS RED isn't an easy book to read. I wouldn't call it relaxing. The prose is dense and elaborate and there are times when the very convoluted plot can get to be a bit of a challenge, but any effort the reader puts into the book will be returned a hundredfold. Or more.
MY NAME IS RED is absolutely one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. It's not so much emotionally engaging as it is artistic. It is a definite masterpiece of art that is totally unlike anything I have ever read. I would definitely recommend this book to all lovers of Beauty and to those who appreciate highly intelligent, highly literary fiction. Pamuk is truly a genius.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliantly written
Review: An incredibly intertwined murder mystery with a love story, art, and history. I could not drop the book till I finished it.
Rating:
Summary: A Haunting, Haunted World, Beautifully Rendered
Review: Pamuk's 16th Century Turkey is a magical world shot through with consciousness - all physical objects, natural and artificial, are invested with self-awareness, fully aroused, senses piqued and perceptively observant. Here we have "the mind" - the perfectly knowing, self-conscious thoughts - of coins, dogs, horses, painted dervishes, trees, the color Red, Death (personified and unpersonifed), and of an exuberant cast of unforgettable characters, both living and dead, whose insistent voices effortless cross over from the other side in Pamuk's seemingly borderless world of physical and spiritual Being. (Indeed, My Name Is Red begins, like Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, the narrator speaking to us from a watery grave.)
A nickel's worth of dime-store aesthetics: one function of art is to elicit - through the creation of representations, the arrangement of symbols, and the like - sensations that might otherwise be impossible. I can never experience Ottoman Istanbul in its 16th Century context. I will never see with the eyes of a court miniaturist or illuminator of manuscripts or a courtier or a rag- or liver-seller. But Pamuk convincingly recreates these myriads of worlds in all their strangeness with the imagination and skill of an ethnologist who has lived among these lives for decades. Here is a unique world, and Orhan Pamuk the ideal tour guide. With immense subtlety, literary nuance, and historical and philosophical erudition, Pamuk has written what, at its most fundamental level, is a literary-scholarly mystery that at times is reminiscent of Eco's The Name of the Rose. Someone is murdering the great miniaturists of the Ottoman court. But why kill an official painter or calligrapher, who works largely from royal commission, and who executes his commissions in a highly formalized manner that idealizes the absence of "style"? The world of Pamuk's late 16th Century Istanbul is one in which the pace of change is accelerating and colliding with entrenched forces of jealously preserved tradition. That world is nearly as exotic to contemporary Turks as it will be to us, and Pamuk (and his translator, Erdag Goknar) has a lot of explaining to do, which he manages by carefully assembling a painterly, almost pointillistic narrative, dab by dab, stroke by stroke, giving gradual shape to the story, displaying exemplary patience and timing, advancing or withholding plot and subplot with consummate skill. My Name Is Red is also a monumental, and monumentally odd, love story, a tangled tale involving Pamuk's hero, "Black," and Shekure, the impossibly beautiful daughter of the Court's "Head Illuminator," as well as a host of other characters. My Name Is Red is, moreover, a formidable, forbidding book, filled with strange names and places and embedded tales from esoteric lands in faraway times, requiring considerable readerly patience and attention. In return for the effrontery of have made such demands, however, the author (and publisher) is bound by honor to provide rich rewards. Happily, Pamuk closes the deal. The familiar materials of the epic novel - love, hate, friendship, rivalry, loyalty and betrayal, political machinations, the clash of great ideas, the grinding together of tectonic movements of time, in which one side or the other must give way - are spectacularly worked in the dazzling, winding, dreamlike context of the Ottoman court. For me, one long chapter at the heart of the novel captures perfectly the pervasive sense of the numinous that Orhan Pamuk casts in this beautiful novel. Black and the head illuminator receive extraordinary permission to search for clues within the inner sanctum and holiest of holies, the Royal Treasury. Their guide is an aged dwarf who knows the treasure rooms intimately and can locate any item in the antique clutter of countless conquests, royal gifts, and opulent indulgence. Noting the awe and apprehension on the faces of the two investigators - overwhelmed by the opportunity to caress and examine objects of legendary beauty or notoriety from among the piles of paintings, tapestries, jewels and bejeweled weapons, gold plate, rare oversized books - he asks, "Frightened? . . . Everybody is frightened on their first visit. At night the spirits of these objects whisper to each other." With its whispering spirits, sentient paintings, quirky lovers, and a lost world fully realized and recovered, My Name Is Red is an absorbing, gorgeous gift of a novel from a master artist. (And let me conclude by singing a paean in praise of amazon.com. I would never have discovered this book had I not, having read through several non-fiction works on Turkey, gone to the amazon.com web-page of one and seen "Customers who bought titles like this one also bought . . ." My Name is Red. "An intriguing title," I thought. A bookworm seldom needs more. So my most hearty thanks, amazon.com, Jeff Bezos and company, for having made such discoveries possible. Yes, yes, we all see the commercial motive, but - to stretch a point - the European Renaissance came out of commercial motives as well. We're all grownups here.)
Rating:
Summary: Meaning Proceeds Form.
Review: What a fascinating book. A discertation on the impact of western ideas upon traditional islamic values wrapped up in a murder mystery. At its simplest "My name is Red" is a murder mystery set in Istanbul at the end of the the sixteenth century. A clerk named "Black" who has recently returned from a exile of over a decade is asked by his old master to investigate the murder of a gilder who was in the masters employ. A murder which may have arisen as a result of the illustrations that were being prepared for the Sultan to present as a gift to the Venetians. On a deeper philosophical level, "My name is Red" is an investigation of the impact on Islamic throughts and traditions of the Western "Frankish" society, with specific emphasis on the art of the illustrator/minaturist. A style of art in which the standard of perfection has been established, where varying from that style, where the addition of your own touch, your own signature on an image established centuries before by a master is tantamount to heresy.
Rating:
Summary: Erudite historical whodunnit
Review: It's set in 16th century Istanbul, and a lot of its appeal comes from the information about that time and setting. I don't know how accurate it is. We are told that the cochineal insect comes from Hindustan. The narrator telling us this is the color red, which should know better. Other narrators includes a gold coin, a picture of a dog, and the multiple suspects in a murder mystery involving the illustrators of a book the Sultan has commissioned. There's an underlying theme of Turkey poised between East and West, symbolized by confict between traditional Eastern art forms and the forms of Italian Renaissance painting, while all representation of the human body is considered blasphemous by some.
It's a complex narrative that demands a lot of attention, the sort of book where somebody dons vanbraces and we're supposed to know what they are, but has its rewards.
Rating: 
Summary: Orhan Pamuk?
Review: Orhan Pamuk is a simply an orientalist culture man. He is not even an intellectual, and his books are only good marketing purposes. In one of his interview he says 'Ottoman empire is like a rude man trying to entice the elegant lady, Europe'. He has this mediocre orientalist level of thinking ability. The Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, Octavio Paz, says "If your book is a best seller, you have to worry about the level of your its intellectual level". My advice is do not buy this book, it's total waste of time and money, but if you really want to read some market book go and read harry potter or something :)
Rating:
Summary: faith.art. love. murder. one leads to the other!! genius!!
Review: my best novel of the year so far. orhan pamuk's my name is red is a salute to the tradition of the dervish tales of lore and he captures the sounds, sights and spirit of the 16th century intrigue filled turkey with a vividness that dares you to ignore it. a murder is committed and the corpse tells you how he was killed, but not who. this intriguing novel narrated in turns by the master artisans, the women in their lives, the dogs that roam their streets, the gold that they hunger for the structure all in an effort to uncover the devious villain who thinks himself superior to his art. how dare he! pamuk shows his wit and vivacity in keeping a light flow right through and entertaining you even through the most philosophical passages. a pure delight. the way a weighty novel should be written. with a touch of lightness.
Rating: 
Summary: It's got it's ups and downs
Review: The imagery in this book is breathless, the characters vivid, and the technique interesting and unique. However, the plot is not the most interesting in the world. The murder mystery aspect of the book is a failed attempt to add a hook and make the story go somewhere. You will find that the mystery does not interest you nearly as much as the characters. Pamuk is rather wordy and tries to stuff the work with meaning and metaphors. Intead, My Name is Red comes off as floundering and contrived. If you want a good character study and a fascinating historical setting read it; if you want first class writing and a well-developed plot, look elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: A mountain? Yes. Magical? Not really!
Review: As a great fan of both Istanbul and Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose" I started this book with high expectations. Yet, after finishing this historic whodunnit, whydunnit would be a better description, I was somewhat less than impressed. Pamuk skillfully weaves a couple of yarns together. Among them, the historical development of Islamic figurative art, the differences in western versus eastern celebration of the individual, the influence of rising fundamentalism, a murder mystery and an Annie Proulx-like love story. Yet, Pamuk style, which has drawn comparison with Proust and Mann and can result in great 1001 night type short stories, started wearing me down after a while. Pamuk is a very good writer, but I am afraid that Marcel and Thomas are a little out of his league. While his "broad style" does create a sense of atmosphere, less would have been more here. Moreover, the endlessly outdrawn revelation of the murderer is among the most anticlimactic ones that I have encountered. Especially, since so many of my fellow reviewers praise this book to the high heavens I want to add a cautionary word to potential readers. If you are looking for another mystery on par with Eco's "Name of the Rose" leave this one on the shelf. However, when interested in a long but successful exploration of East vs. West issues that are very relevant, this may be a rewarding read. Finally, I do want to emphasize, that those familiar with Turkey after Ataturk should closely read the killer's confession of the motives for both murders. This will show that the "feeling of humiliation" of the East that some reviewers have read into this work is a delusion. In fact, any visit to Istanbul, one of the greatest cities on the Planet, teaches that East and West can coexist successfully without conflict.
Rating:
Summary: My Name is Red, by Orhan Pamuk
Review: This book is practically a must if you're going to visit Istanbul. It evokes the spirit of 16th century Topkapi in a much more exciting way than a guidebook can. Also, Pamuk inserts just enough of the extant landmarks to make you feel at home as you walk the streets of the old city. Just one example: Ibrahim Pasha's mansion. This exquisite old house has been restored and is now a hotel. The book is still a wonderful read if you're not going to visit Istanbul, but after reading it, you'll want to.
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